Thursday, December 18, 2008

Here are a few pages of the new 2009 Spring Summer Edition of Southern Bride Magazine due to hit the newstands in January. I loved shooting this session, and chose one of my favorite locations in Perdido Key Florida, a remote key with beautiful surroundings and a rainforest landscape design at the Eden Resort. I hope you enjoy the photographs shown in the layouts from the magazine. For the session my wife Janice provided the hair and makeup designs, and the support team at Southern Bride Magazine assisted with the models and location arrangements, as well as assistance from Orange Beach Weddings, For the session, I used a Canon 5d with a 70-200mm IS lens, and a large california sunbounce reflector, and a variety of additional scrims and reflectors from Westcott. We contracted the models from the local region, and as you can see, they did an incredible job on the session. Part of this collection was shot for our Destination Weddings collection, to give brides an idea of how to turn an ordinary beach wedding into an incredible destination wedding with an international flavor. When I started the shoot, I set the model away from the building, but as I turned and began to notice how the building looked like the bow of a huge cruise ship, I moved the set quickly toward the balcony of the resort to take advantage of the available light. The session began at high noon, which some photographers shy away from due to the intensity of the sunlight, but in this case I used it to my advantage and popped in some extra sun with my reflectors. For the next segment of the session we traveled to the historic district in Mobile Bay. I'll post those next. I hope you enjoy!

Here are some recent photographs from a corporate session with Flemings Steakhouse. Flemings is one of my commercial clients. Flemings is one of the best,high end, fine dining restaurants in the country, winning numerous accolades nationwide. Located prime cities offering the finest in dining experiences,

Flemings offers some incredible cuisine and fine wines.

For this session I was asked to photograph the local owner-partners in the Memphis location for the companies website and various media publications. For this session I used a Canon 5d with a 24-205 mm IS lens and a Canon Fisheye Lens with a colored corrected soft box from Westcott, a diffused fill flash, a small hot light to accent the background, and combined the ambient lighting of the restaurant. I kept the ISO from 500 to 640, and the aperture at 125, with an f-stop of f4. For the room settings I again used some small hot lights to accent the room, and adjusted the color temperature to match the ambient lighting. I left the images a bit on the warm side to add to an evening dining experience.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Last month I was asked to photograph a story line that is being edited into a HD Video presentation for the Holidays at Hope Church in Memphis. The basic story line is about a recovering alcoholic father and his first Christmas back at home with his wife and daughter after treatment. His daughter gives him a gift that reminds him of how wrong he is in his daily life, and how much of a blessing he has in his family. This is a pretty exciting photography/ HD video that will be shown to over 25,000 people who attend the Hope Christmas services on Christmas Eve. It's not often that I get the opportunity to have that many people see my work in one place, so I'm very excited to be involved in this project. These images will be edited by the production editors at Hopes state of the art facilities, cut in Final Cut Pro and rendered to full 1080i HD and shown on 2-25 ft x 35ft HD screens using the latest Christie HD projectors. I did a similar project for Hope this summer, which I will post at a later date. Here are just a few of the several hundred images that I shot for this project. I shot this with a Canon 5d with a Canon 24-105mm IS lens in available light with a california sunbounce light reflector & light modifiers, I did a mild boost in the vibrance level, but the images needed very little color adjustment. This project is a great example of a cinematic style of photography that I offer to many of my commercial clients. Here are just a few of the images from the shoot, they are not in any particular order, but I hope you enjoy the images. (All Images Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved - Michael Allen Photography)

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About Me

An award winning professional photographer offering cutting edge photography for individuals and businesses. Michael has worked with grammy award winning recording artists, high end brides, celebrities, and everyday people. His style is unique, offering natural light photojournalistic styles to high end studio looks. His work appears in magazines and books, and he was recently named one of the Top 25 wedding photographers in Tennessee. Michael is a member of WPPI, PPA and more. Michael is based in Memphis and Nashville Tennessee and travels all across the South. He offers architectural photography, editorial for magazines, food styling, celebrity portraits, concert photography, cinematography for films, lighting for productions and more.

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Our Team

Our principal photographer is Michael Allen. Michael is available for assignments year round at locations across the globe.

Michael's associate photographer is Tracy Leigh Welch. Tracy is an incredible photographer who has helped Michael on shoots across the South, and is available for assignments in the local Memphis area.

Our studio hairstylist and associate photographer is Janice Allen who owns Eston Salon based in Memphis. Janice offers editorial styling for our corporate shoots, editorial and modeling shoots, and is available for assignments in the local Memphis area.

Our makeup artist is Melissa Jadhav who offers several photographers her professional makeup services for photo shoots.

Our set designer is Morgan Armstrong, who owns MemphisModern.com and she helps Michael on shoots for food styling, wardrobe selection, hair and makeup and set design. She's well respected in the IDS interior design community in Memphis and helps facilitate the organization.